
Class L_ 

Book ■ "1 - 



THE 



HEROIC SUCCESSION. 



a 




ORATION 

BY 

Col. Aug. J. H. Duganne. 

Delivered at Cooper Institute, April 15th, 1867, 

ON THE 

SECOND ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE 

DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

COMMEMORATED BY THE 

German Radical Republican Central Committee 

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 



NEW YORK : 
R. M. De Witt, Publisher. 

1867. 



THE HEROIC SUCCESSION. 



The hour brings the man ! Whenever a great and 
worthy cause approaches its life trial, some champion is 
always ordained of God to arise and defend it. The Al- 
mighty sits above all earthly clouds wherein mortals 
grope doubtingly. His Will forever shapes tb.6 past to- 
ward the present, and the present toward the future. 

He buries the seed that it may fructify in its season. 

Therefore, under the eye of Omniscience, four centu- 
ries ago, a ship-boy of Genoa pored over his father's 
charts, and studied stars and books, that he might, there- 
after, in good time, discover this Western Continent. 

Therefore, fleeing from their birth-places, abiding in 
exile, storm-tossed on waves, and wind-driven from their 
havens, the pioneers of American Independence landed, 
at last, upon the barren beaches of New England. 

Therefore, a century later, trained, as a boy in paths of 
peril, and called, as a man, to fields of patriotic labor, 
the chief Washington became his nation's leader. 

And therefore, in another century, a child was born be. 
neath the humble rafters of a Western log-hut, who was 
to grow up, under the Providence of God, and be known 
among nations as Abraham Lincoln, the Liberator. 

For the Eternal One, who rules all peoples, had been 
before these men. His measuring rod had marked the 
work they were to do. His unerring foresight had traced 
the lines they were to follow. And to the comprehension 
of democratic faith there is a noble harmony in the 
various characters and forces that have been precursors 
of our Republic. There is a divine symmetry in the rela- 
tions which they hold to one another — Columbus discov- 
ering, the Pilgrims consecrating, Washington defending, 
Lincoln emancipating. I cannot separate these repre- 
sentative men from the marchings of our Republic. One 
treads behind another; the first prophesies the last; the 
last fulfills the first, and all of them are promises of what 
is yet to come. 

From time to time, during the last twenty years, 
two significant words have passed current among the 
people. Those two words, "Manifest Destiny," were 
flippantly bandied from mouth to mouth, carelessly 
printed in newspapers, lightly quoted by political speak- 
ers. Few who repeated them paused to ponder upon 
their prophetic value beyond the narrow limit of nation- 
al aggrandizement. Theoretically, they implied territo- 
rial expansion, Cuban revolution, Mexican colonization. 
Practically illustrated, their meaning took definite form 
in the annexation of Texas, the conquest of California, 
the absorption of a neighboring Republic's border lands. 
Figuratively used by the stump orator, they predicted an 
" extension of the area of freedom." Beyond this flight 
of fancy they were not interpreted by the orators of party 
or the priests of progress. 

But the vital idea of "manifest destiny" lies deeper 
than mere material advancement. It finds place in the 
popular apprehension with that other pregnant idea 
which is conceived in the " Monroe Doctrine." Both of 
thes9 ideas are restless predictions of an American 
future. Both are impatient aspirations toward the com_ 
missioned work of our Republic. Both are perceptions 
of the great fact that this Western Continent was re- 
served from the beginning to be the theatre of a human 
drama, to which all other human dramas, of past and 
present, are but prologues and accessories, whether their 
characters and scenery be Asian, African, European or 
American. 

For myself, I have an abiding faith in this reservation 
of the New World for some grand purpose ordained in 
the beginning. To me there is more than a mere se- 
quence of chances discovered in the March of terrestrial 
events, converging historically and actually toward our 
own Republic. I acknowledge a Higher Law in the 
Reformation, the French Revolution, the Independence 
of American nationalities. I perceive the links of a 
chain in the epochs of discovery which gave us printing, 
steam, electricity. I accept as designed the irruptions of 



change in Old World nations. I welcome as means, or- 
dained to an end, all "manifestations of destiny," such 
as our New World wars, emancipations, immigrations 
and expansions. Each event is an advance, each con- 
sequence is a march; the pre*ent is a campaign, the 
future is conquest. Progressive design, symmetric co- 
working are discoverable in all history. Providence is 
the pioneer of humanity. A handwriting of judgment is 
upon the walls of Old World nationalities; but the lire 
and cloud of renewed leadership move evermore before 
our New World republics. 

Thus, in our day, " manifest destiny" becomes a sooth- 
saying. The people are their own prophets. A wonder- 
ful thought, destined to ripen into marvelous action, may 
for years lie germinating under popular sympathy, be- 
fore it shall become recognized by governments or lead- 
ers. There were many forerunners of the Reformation, 
and of its champion, Martin Luther. Albigense and 
Waldense had died for protesting, long before Protestant- 
ism became the name of a revolution. Wicliff, Huss, 
Savanorola, Jerome, Galileo, Melancthon, Calvin: these 
were not creations, but the created of religious inquiry; 
they were the bright crests of waves: a human ocean was 
under them, upforcing them. Leaders cannot make a 
revolution; they only manifest it. It was conceived be- 
fore them, through the necessity which called for it. In 
the fullness of time and occasion it is born, and they are 
born with it. 

How long before our American Revolution was the 
seed sown for it ? Certainly as far back as the time when 
independent believers sailed away, self-exiled, from Eng- 
land to Holland; assuredly at as remote a period as that 
of St. Bartholomew's massacres. Centuries, doubtless, 
held the seed in their bosom before it fructified on Bun- 
ker Hill and at Yorktown. 

So with all growths of moral or material circumstances. 
So with all germination of progress, shaping thought in- 
to action under silence and through lapses of time. I 
am dropping a grain toward future harvesting. Much or 
little, it must find place in the hereafter of fruition. It 
matters not whether my agency be recognized or remain 
unnoted. A seed is no more or less a seed, whether Paul 
plant it, or it be dropped by Paul's jailor unknowingly. 
A great fruitage bloomed in the Reformation, and much 
of it was from seeds sown by obscure monks and name- 
less pilgrims, ages before ; men who, dying, left no visible 
footprint, yet whose ideas, falling by the wayside, had 
become seed-corn to bourgeon above their ashes, into 
harvests ripe for the sickle of Luthpr. 

When Christopher Columbus discovered America in 
1492, it was full time for the discovery. 

Kingcraft had had ample trial. It is coeval in history 
with the ambition of man ; for the first restive son who 
left a patriarch's roof, and led forth his dependents into 
wilderness chiefdom, was the embryonic type of royalism 
in mankind. All giant despotisms of ancient days— dy- 
nasties of Assur and Ninus, and the Pharaohs and Ptole- 
mies, and the monarchies of Medes and Persians— were 
but aggregations of tribes and castes, each governed by 
its tyrant or priest. When men grew weary of republi- 
can tribe-life, they soon enough found masters and chiefs 
to goad or curb them. So, through all ages, arbitrary rule 
has had field and sco.pe of experiment; and it is because 
no single man, or class of men, can possess the divine 
wisdom necessary to govern other classes, that the exper- 
iment has always resulted in misery to mankind. 

The Hebrews, in their stubbornness, pr.ived for a king, 
and the narable of the bramble failed to worn them of 
their folly. So, at their petition, arose Saul. After him 
came war, rebellion, disunion, captivity and dispersion. 

Continually, in all nations, the folly and crini3 of oivil 
strife, of sectional jealousy, of hatreds fomented between 
rich and poor, have been visited at length, as in the He- 
brew commonwealth, by that soourge of the people — 



4 



kingcraft. When the frogs of fable desired to establish a 
monarchy, a log was given them for their king, and when 
they still murmured, because the log lay motionless, a 
royal stork was sent, to make them his daily food. But 
of what avail are the wisdom of Jotham's parable or 
iEsop's fable to men who exalt tyranny above liberty? 
True it is, that the gods, when they purpose to destroy a 
people, first make that people mad. 

Greece, the land of classic republics, with grand tradi- 
tions and glorious records, now pays her taxes to support 
a foreign-born prince upon his throne at Athens. Italy, 
forgetful of Caesars an4 Neros and Caligulas, accepts her 
Sardinian dynasty as the recompense of a hundred strug- 
gles for freedom. France, rejecting the lessons of three 
revolutions, grovels in imperial dust, and crowns a mur- 
derous usurper with the laurels of Caesar. And Holland, 
no longer dreaming of that sturdv Dutch republic which 
once braved the world, contents herself with monarchy 
and obscurity. 

The old experiment— the never-satisfying endeavor of 
one man to rule millions ; the mummery and sham of roy- 
alty; the authority of salaried and sinecured officials and 
orders, with titles to their baptismal names and parch- 
ment claims to be higher and better than their fellow 
mortals— the servile mob, the tax-paying traders, the 
toiling artisans— the People ! Everywhere repeated, this 
hoary imposture, kingcraft, still imposes upon Christians 
as well as heathens. The spectacle is forever revealed to 
us of privileged castes and of pariahs with neither rights 
nor privileges. We need not go to India or to China to 
behold a circle of sacredness drawn around a few human 
beings, while the many are excluded and degraded. We 
witness a like hideous contrast, under the symbols of civ- 
ilization, in France, in England, in all the kingdoms of 
Christendom. 

Yet there is no divine prescript for inequality. Nature 
has her mountains and her plains, her giants and her 
pigmies, her oaks and her reeds; but the mountain, the 
giant, the oak are no more perfect or pretentious, each 
in its limit, than are the plain, the pigmy and the reed. 
A star, in its orbit, fills the orbit; a snail, in its shell, fills 
the shell; each is symmetric with its destiny, as fixed by 
eternal law, and there is no inequality in their condi. 
tions . since hoth fulfill the purposes for which they were 
created. Who, then, shall deny equality to mankind— to 
each his complement and fullness, according to capacity 
of nature ? Who shall prescribe bounds to the claim or 
right of a single human being to be and to enjoy all that 
nature fits him for? With brain, frame, limbs, propor- 
tions, senses and faculties inherent in me, who shall deny 
my equality of right to fill such measure of life and action 
as my relative capacity can compass? Therefore it is 
that through all the years of human progression, from 
savageism to refinement, the yearning for equality, and 
the claim; of equal and exact justice to all men, have 
been manifested in revolutions and reformations. 

I have faith, however, in the ultimate triumph of dem- 
ocratic, protesting manhood over king-craft and noble- 
craft. The victories of the people are progressive. As- 
syrian despotisms, and Persian tyrannies, and Macedo- 
nian monarchies gave way to Roman empire. This was 
progress. Roman armies overran barbarous nations 
More progress. Christianity arose and subjugated hea- 
thenism. Loftier progress still. Roman authority car- 
ried the new religion to remotest western tribes. Ma- 
homet, meanwhile, sprang up with his creed of Islam, 
and taught to the idolatrous East a worship of one God 
only. Thus to the Orient and the Occident progress still 
Uristian Bil lized Europe: a 

a Koran enlightened Asia and Africa. These 
movements wore progressive. The Crusades were marches 
forward, bringing nations and people together that had 
been strangers— combining Christian interests as barriers 
against the career of Mahomet's successors. Feudal 
ages, with their chivalry, wore progressive. Even serf- 
doms were ameliorations of ancient slavery. In good 
time serfdom and vassalage gave way before progressive 
nomocracy, which constantly wrote its protest against op 



pression, sometimes in blood upon the block or fire at the 
stake; sometimes in insurrections; sometimes in revolu- 
tions, that changed rulers and ended dynasties. Gun- 
powder leaped up, then, with a democratic shock, against 
steel-clad knights and stone castles But there was a 
greater democrat than Schwartz or Friar Bacon to come 
afterward, with a democratic force in his hand stronger 
than gunpowder. This was John Fust, the printer, the 
workman, who made a Great Reformation possible, and 
without whose forerunning Luther might have remained 
silent in his cell at Erfurt. Thus the march of progress 
began to broaden through centuries. So we may trace 
the orderings of Divine Wisdom, age after age, and gen- 
eration after generation— from the years of Hebrew 
prophets down to the years of Luther, and John Huss, 
and Zwingli, and Cromwell, and Mirabeau. 

The experiment of kingcraft had ample scope during 
all these cycles. But this world of ours is a wide one, 
and human government must be studied out, like other 
philosophies and sciences. If years were numbered by 
thousands, and centuries by scores, before gunpowder and 
the printing press could be evolved, it is no wonder that 
republicanism halted, or that democracy could not make 
head. But there was another discovery to follow that of 
Schwartz and Fust. Columbus was to discover a New 
World. 

Now comes the solution of problems that perplexed 
like sphinx riddles in all ages. A New World is a new 
field for the old experiment. The Eternal Ruler of Na- 
tions permits this conflict between kingcraft and de- 
mocracy to remain undecided on three Continents; but 
a fourth continent is opened, and in its destiny the gov- 
erning problem will be solved. 

So, while Luther thunders his democratic protests 
against Pope and Kaiser, while gunpowder roars at the 
gates of Feudalism, and the Printing Press steadily un- 
dermines old fortresses of error and prejudice; an ob- 
scure mariner awakens gradually to the perception of 
another great truth. Christoval Colon declared that 
land existed beyond the Ultima Thule of ancient geogra- 
phers, and at last the gates of the New World were 
opened. In this New World— during uncounted centu- 
ries—the experiments of kingcraft and of republican- 
ism had been going on, just as in the Old World. Des- 
potism on the one hand, democratic tribes on the other, 
divided the aboriginal nationalities. Columbus was to 
herald annihilation to all these New World systems. 
What mighty expiation had become necessary for some 
vast crime of the past we cannot tell ; but that coming of 
Columbus, we know, was the forerunner of extinction to 
nations without a history— to generations destitute of 
chronicles. 

It matters not, after the great work of Columbus was 
achieved, whether he suffered or was rewarded by Fer- 
dinand and Isabella, monarchs of Castile andArragon. 
Biographers of the Genoese mariner tell us of trials and 
disappointments, and reverses, endured by this man of 
the people. We read that, after giving islands and con- 
tinents to Spain, he was repaid only by ingratitude and 
cruelty. Cast into chains by a rival, who supercedes liim 
in lommnnd, the discover of America returns heart- 
broken to the country which he enriched. Ferdinand 
and Isabella attempt to reconcile him, and they punish 
his enemy. But Columbus preserves his fetters as me- 
morials of royal generosity. Wherever he goes, those 
manacles accompany him. They hang over his bed at 
night. Ho commands that they shall be buried in his coffin 
Rest, now! Christopher Columbus! Thy grave is in 
the New World ! a world sacred to the experiment of 
Freedom. Thou wert the pioneer of God's purposes 
that are to be developed upon American soil. King- 
i-ral t ai id noble-craft have had their trial during many 
thousands of years, in all realms of three continents; the 
fourth continent is for Freedom. The experiment of 
Manhood under Heavenly protection, is for the New 
World. The problem of E luality is to be worked out to 
a solution above the ashes of extinct and unrecorded na- 
tions of the Past— above the dust of heroic Columbus 
mingling with the earth of his Discovery. 



History teems with mere physical heroes. No nation 
is without its traditions of strong men and fierce war- 
chiefs, whose natures were sanguinary and whose deeds 
were murderous. Mankind has always reverenced courage, 
exalting its "mighty hunters'' into kings, and worship- 
ing its departed warriors as demi-gods. From the days 
of Nimrod to the time of Charles tbe Swede, and Na- 
poleon the Oorsican, myriads of champions have flung 
their gauntlets into the arena of life, and multitudes of 
conquerors have ridden over humanity. The archives of 
centuries are filled with title-deeds to renown ; the songs 
of generations rehearse the exploits of leaders; the gal- 
leries of every age preserve its trophies and its armor; 
the crypts of the great nast contain the ashes of cap- 
tains, and the effigies of commanders, whose restl >s~ am- 
bition once "kept the world awake," but whose very 
names have now faded out of note or mention. How lit- 
tle indeed of mortal distinction survives to posterity be- 
yond tbe mere name of that mortal who achieved it, 
Of all the glory of these conquerors of men how little 
that is ennobling or endurin;; can be redeemed from the 
waters of oblivion; those dull, black waves, that, year by 
year, wash off the jutting headlands of fame, and under- 
mine the crumbling bases of shrines that seemed sealed 
to immortality ! 

Back then into Lethean shadows, let phantom heroes 
vanish, with all the blood-printed chronicles of their 
material existence ! Worthier to dwell upon is the liv- 
ing fact that, from the mob of Caesars, we can summon 
forth a few full-statured men, uncrowned but kingly, 
who look into our souls with eyes of command, and con- 
trol us from above, as planets control the ocean tides- 
Thus, white and shining, as glaciers on Mont Blanc, the 
pure examples of Tell, of Winkleried, and of Hofer. 
keep heavenly watch over the hills of Alpine republics; 
thus , even now, upon degenerate Greece, Leonidas look 
f romThermopylre and Bozzaris from his battle-grave 
Thus Sobieski's spirit broods over Tolish patriotism 
Thus Brutus and Rienzi glide out of their tombs, to min 
gle with Italian revolutions, and to stand on either side of 
Garibaldi. Thus "Washington arises over the sinking 
billows of disunion, and towers in his olden majesty, the 
guardian genius of the Republic which he created. Who 
shall aver that there is no sublime relationship between 
the grand souls of those who found or preserve a nation- 
and the soul of the nation itself '? The Greeks believed 
their chiefs and warriors to be constellated after death, 
and that thus, from Heavenly heights, they looked down 
on their countrymen. " Ab castra ad astra ! He has as- 
cended from the camp to the stars!" said a Latin poet- 
of his departed hero; and it was, at least, a beautiful su- 
perstition which invented the fable of Castor and Pol- 
lux returning from their place in the skies to mingle with 
Greeks and Trojans on the plains of Illium, If there b i 
memory in a future world— and without memory th 
soul would be annihilated— we cannot choose but be 
lieve that our martyrs and heroes of the past are inter- 
ested in the country and kindred that were their own 
in mortal life. 

Surely, then, we may admire that simple trust which, 
in the days of chivalry, imparted to a soldier the assur- 
ance that a champion saint and guardian ol his native 
land fought with her armies, and inspired her leaders- 
"St. George for England!" "St. Denis for France!'' 
and "St. James for Spain!" were battle-cries that bore 
with them a faith worth more than swords and lances. 

And our " St. George" was Washington! the republi- 
can chief and statesman whose lofty figure fills the open 
portal of our country's grandeur, his one hand linked 
with old-time chivalry, and bis otherclaspiug democracy 
type of the nobility and model for the people 
George Washington, the man whose life built 
up a wall against ancient tyrannies and a watch- 
tower for future liberties. I recognize the very 
hand of Providence in those events which raised this 
representative republican to his great ordeal and victory; 
the same hand which led up Moses and David from wil- 
derness flock-keeping; which pointed the stars to Colon, 
and the Rock of Plymouth to Mayflower Pilgrims; that 



Hand which beckons the oppressed and persecuted of 
all climes to this Western Continent, here to find "free- 
dom to worship Col," and here to consecrate a nation 
worrhv to become His chosen in the work of a mysteri- 
ous future. 

' " r?a i ■ :. was more a type of old paladins, 
whereof we read in romance, than of modern genesis of 
armies. His was the genius that stands, c.ihn and god- 
like, creating order out of chaos, organizing victory from 
the fragments 01 repulse. He was removad, by the pride 
of his nature, th e self-sustenance of his character, from 
the influence of common ambition and of customary in- 
centives. Contemporaries called him cold and haughty ; 
he was simply reserved and self-abiding. He was im- 
pressed with the dignity of minhool unspotted by con- 
tact with the vices and follies which marked the age in 
which he lived; an age when the ancien reffime o c France, 
under Louis XV., was culminating the crimes of centu- 
ries in one generation— a generation to be blotted out in 
blood ; an age of free thinking, of licentiousn ess, of heart- 
less frivolity in the Old World: but an age, also, rf st?rn 
endurance, l rave hoping, unflinching effort in the New 
World, represented by the countrymen of Washington. 
And as Louis the Magnificent, and Marlborough, and 
the French philosophers, and the British ministers of 
George Third, represented decaying systems and effete 
opinions of the Past, so, on the other hand, George 
Washington became the representative and the pioneer- 
man of a Future, which was to be fresh, renovated, 
healthful, and hopeful for humanity. The American 
Revolution was pre-ordained, I cannot doubt, as a great 
dividing-work between the Old and the New; George 
Washington was the chosen director of that work; and 
God blessed him in its success. 

Centuries of oppression; generations of tyrants and 
slaves; cycles and decades of agonized endurance; and 
then, leaping up in volcanic flames— a Revolution ! I care 
noi whether the wrone; be religious, or poli ical, or so- 
cial : whether the despotism be over mind or body; 
whether the victims be feudal serfs, or Indian pariahs, or 
Greek Helots, or negro slave?; ther; comes, and must 
come, sooner or later, the day of Revolution— the hour of 
Retribution. There is a Nemes's rf Nations as well as of 
Individuals; and upon the track of crime— whether it be 
perpetrated against a People or a Man— the hounds of 
justice are forever baying. 

In vain, O Feudal France, your kings and barons com- 
bined to exterminate the Jacquerie; that mob of peas- 
ant-men and laborers, rising, age afte- age, to assert its 
claim to Manhood! Vainly, O Feudal England! your 
Norman chivalry struck down, at intervals, under its 
mace, some Wat the Tyler and some Jack Cade, rebel - 
democrats, who groped about in mediaeval shadows, bear- 
ing dim torch-lights of Liberty, and who wrote upon 
their rude banners a question that no clerk co aid an- 
swer: 

" Wnen Adam de'ved, and Eve span, 
Who w&Blhen the 'Gentleman":" 

Vain are axes and gibbets, and chains and whips, 
against rough pioneer-republicans of this so-t. Tne 
people's first champions are always martyrs, dying like 
Gracchus or Rie izi, sometimes by the hands of foes, and 
too often in the house of friend). Multitudinous waves 
must dash azainst the ro ;ky foundations m- encompass- 
ing sands of Tyranny's stronghold ■, befi r. : he old tradi- 
tionalstrength of them can be undermined orencroached 
upon. But, though myriads of these waves break, dis- 
perse, and retire, there is a great ocean always behind 
them. Thus, with all martyred patriots and freedom- 
seekers of centuries and ages gone by. They were the 
incesmnt waves, dashing themselves to fragments; but 
behind them were Revolutions and Retributions. Be- 
hind the ./<«</«. i U o r Franc J and the Risings of England, 
were the dark gatherings of popular wrath, and the ad- 
vancing tides of democratic power, that must sweep 
Charles Stuart from his throne to a scaffold, and Louis 
Capet from his palace to the guillotine. After the Jac- 
querie, in good time, was to com) the Reign of Terror 
and the French Republic, and the Oorsican. After Wat 
Tyler and Jack Cade were to come Cromwell and his 



6 



Ironsides. So these procrastinations of justice, in which 
kings and men indulge; these dalliances with lioary 
wrongs; these denials of Truth and Right that go on. 
year after year, and from generation to generation, must 
have an end, always, under God's ordinances. If the 
Aztec tribes, enthroned upon the lakes of Tezcuco, trod 
down during ages the children of Tlascala, anon, when 
Cortez appeared onMexic borders, the Tlascalans nocked 
under Spanish chiefs, and hurled hack their wrath upon 
Aztec oppressors. Thus the tyranny of a dominant tribe 
begot and nursed internal enemies, whereby the stranger 
gained foothold in Mexico, and her ancient people were 
exterminated. If the Spaniards, in their turn, grew 
tyrannous, and ruled a conquered race with stripes and 
tortures, chains and degradations, Heaven reversed its 
ludgments, and the Spaniards found themselves the prey 
of civil wars, of treasons, revolutions, and conspiracies. 
God's law of Retribution smites the Mexic land inces- 
santly. That Nemesis of Nations scourges all the Span- 
ish countries, from Sierra Madre down to Patagonian 
headlands. Everywhere a trail of vengeance follows 
wrong-doing. Three centuries and a half of Spanish, 
French, Portuguese, Dutch, and Brazilian domination 
over weaker races have scored their chronicles in blood; 
and the end is not yet. Massacres of St. Domingo, Ma- 
roon wars, hereditary quarrels of races, hecatombs of 
kidnapped blacks drowned, flayed and tortured, on the 
ocean, and on mainlands and islands; continual stripes, 
barbarian warfare ; thus the history of this New World 
duplicates all miseries of the Old ; because the Law of 
Retribution will force out its consequences. Brute op- 
pression must be punished, even by instruments brutal 
as itself. The Doom must fall. The executioner is sacred 
till his blow descends. After their work is done, the gal- 
lows and block may be burned ; but as instruments of 
justice they were consecrated. 

Yet revolutions never go backward. " A cannon-hall," 
said Lamartine, "having struck a wall, rebounds; hut 
the wall is no stronger for the concussion!" Strokes of 
right are like strokes of Fate; irresistible, irreversible. 
The Mississippi cannot retreat upon the Missouri, though 
you shall dam it, and embank against it; and though the 
ocean tides flow back over its bars, driven by tropical 
storms. Steadily and inflexibly the great volume must 
tend seaward, and mingle with the immensity of ocean. 
God's laws take note of its currents thereafter. So the 
great river of human progression moves majestically for- 
ward. Fleets may battle upon its bosom; forts thunder 
from its banks; multitudes of dead sink into its depths; 
islands, shores, habitations, edifices, may be engulfed by 
it; but the tremendous stream rolls on. You cannot bar- 
ricade it; you cannot curb or back it. 

And the preparations for revolution forever continue. 
Great questions and trutrs, surging under Society's 
crust, cast up their leaders and champions, in age after 
age: at one time Moses, at another Mahomet, afterward 
Luther, anon Cromwell, presently Washington, and, in 
good time, Lincoln. 

Very different, in power, character and conception, are 
all these Representative Men of Human Progress; but 
they are each of a succession; links of a grand catena 
which unites generations and regenerations in an electric 
impulsion, toward greater results. The chain is never 
broken; a succession, surer than the apostolic succession 
of churches, distinguishes this hierarchy of heroic leaders 
in the march of Bight. Certainly as a general falls in 
the battle, so certainly is an infant soldier born into the 
ranks, hereafter to become a general. The priests of 
Thibet, who worship a Grand Lama, assure the multi- 
tude that when their Deity dies his spirit enters into the 
body of a babe; and, henceforth, the babe is deified and 
worshiped as the Grand Lama. Such a superstition be- 
comes fact when applied to the succession of immortal 
beings who identify their lives with the cause of Truth 
in I Freedom. The Deity which inspires them cannot 
die, but passes from form to form through the ages' 
transfiguring one hero after another with the recogniz. 
able glory of his missi.ni. 

When Abraham Lincoln was born in penury and pnva- 
ton, from the loins of a sober yeoman, whose mental 



culture had compassed only the scrawling of his own 
humble signature; when the name given to this child 
was the name of a pioneer grandsire killed and scalped 
by savages; when a lowly log-hut and a life of toil were 
the rea angueti domi of this scion of obscurity,— who could 
then have discerned any hero-nimbus upon the infant's 
forehead ? Who would have hailed, under the rafters of 
this backwoods home, the future Liberator of a Bace ? 
Yet, Abraham Lincoln, under Almighty Providence, was 
a link of the unbroken chain— a hero of the immortal 
succession— which has descended through Hebrews, and 
Greeks, and Romans, and Germans, and Gauls, and 
Britons; manifested and glorified in all ages, nations, 
and races, through conflicts, and sufferings, and tri. 
umphs, and martyrdoms. 

When Abraham Lincoln opened his eyes upon the rnde 
surroundings of his mother's home, in the year of Chris- 
tian history eighteen hundred and nine, there was then 
need for the translation of a new hero-soul into mortal 
flesh; and it was full time for the avatar of a fresh leader 
of the future. 

At that time, Liberty was a mockery in the Old World ; 
Gallic independence, conceived and born in blood and 
revenge, had been strangled already in its cradle, and the 
betrayer of a Republic had crowned himself with the im- 
perial laurels of a Ctesar. One Corsican— the patriot 
Pascal de Pa oh— had just died in bitter exile, disappointed 
in all his hopes of Liberty; another Corsican — Bonaparte 
— was divorcing his true wife, in order to secure an alli- 
ance with tyrants, and a dynasty of usurpation. French 
armies, after bearing the eagles of Liberty across Alps 
and Pyrenees, were now stifling Spanish patriotism in 
the blood of its defenders, at Saragossa, and striving to 
tread down freedom into snows of the Tyrol. Hofer, 
the last hero of that Alpine race which gave Tell and Win- 
kelried to the. World, was at this time held for execution, 
because he had struck for his Republic. 

Black slaves, having broken their rusted fetters, were 
struggling desperately in St. Domingo. Napoleon had de- 
posed the Pope, and the Pope had excommunicated Na- 
poleon. And, to crown all, the servile Senate of France, 
welcoming an Imperial Master on their knees, had hailed 
him as "the greatest of heroes, who ever achieved victories 
but for the happiness of the world." 

Was it not time, in this year 18C9 — when Freedom lay 
supine, and made no sign, in elder lands; was it not full 
time that a man-child should be born into this new con- 
tinent, with the mark of a great mission imprinted upon 
his soul ? So, then, unnoticed and obscurely, the back- 
woods infant was suckled by his pious mother, and held 
jn the stout arms of his father, the laborer, till such hour 
as his sinews waxed strong, and his young mind expanded, 
and he went forth into the wide world, a democrat among 
democracies, to take his place as a sovereign elector, scep- 
tered with the ballot. 

But this boy's path into the world's arena lay through 
jears of toil and hardship; toil and hardships cheered by 
little boyish recreation. Books were rare in the wilder- 
ness of Indiana and Illinois; companions were few; and 
the child's own mother died ere he was nine years old- 
Then came the mysterious yearning for "light " in this 
dawning intellect; thereafter the quest for odd volumes 
and sparse reading, and in good time the treasures of a 
' Pilgrim's Progress," a " Life of Henry Clay," a " Life 
of Washington," a copy of "JEsop's Fables." These 
representative books were, doubtless, foundation-stones 
in the life-structure of a representative man. Never did 
they sustain a simpler or grander edifice than the soul of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

Out of the farm-toils of boyhood; out of the splitting of 
rails to fence his father's homestead, our future Presi- 
dent steps on the deck of a flatboat — a green hand, hired 
at ten dollars a month, to voyage the Mississippi to New 
Orleans. 

The youth is full-statiired in manhood now, standing 
six feet four, with an erect head and a brave front, and 
his large eyes looking the world in the face unshrink- 
ingly. Those eyes were open, we may be sure, while the 
il atbo. t was passing through slave plantations, and lying 



by at levees, and made fast under the shadow of negro 
anction-rooins. Our Illinois rail-splitter was measuring, 
unconsciously, perhaps, the timber of that upas-growth 
which choked the rich development of Southern nature. 
A campaign against that savage race which had slain 
his grandfather ; a few years of self training as clerk in 
a back settlement store ; a few years of trade for him- 
self ; and we find Abraham Lincoln, at the age of twenty" 
three, a law student a land-surveyor and a candidate for 
the Illinois Legislature. Two years afterward he is 
elected, and twice re-elected, and thereafter settles 
down, as a lawyer, at Springfield Illinois. 

Thus on the highway of public and political life ; thus 
step by step, from the bacKwoods, and the pile of split 
rails, and the flat-boat, and the village store, this hum- 
ble man, who was born in the year 1809, when Freedom 
had expired in' France, and its last hero, was doomed to 
death in Mantua ; this low born democrat of the New 
World, pursued the march of his destiny, and assumed 
his place in the succession of leaders foreordained by the 
Almighty to the service of Humanity. 

Moving at his side, and even-paced with his growth, 
the Wrongs and Rights of our Republic were accomplish- 
ing their probation. 

The slave-power and the free-power were advancing 
from diverse points toward an inevitable conflict ; and 
God willed, as he, without doubt, provided, that Abra- 
ham Lincoln should stand in the gap of battle. There- 
fore had he been nurtured to humility and endurance in 
youth ; therefore accustomed to thought and action in 
manhood ; therefore exalted to public confidence and 
station ; therefore elevated to the Congress of our Repub- 
lic ; therefore selected, above all the giants of politics, 
to become the standard-bearer of a great movement, 
which was to be the beginning of a Revolution. Who 
shall deny that the Hand of God was in this ? Who shall 
ascribe to political chance the Union of the Hour with 
the Man— of the Cause with the Champion? 

Our war against Rebellion was a great Missionary 
field : its gospel was Liberty ; its apostles were warriors 
and Martyrs ; its pulpits were Fortresses and Gun-ships ; 
its preachers were those " sons of thunder"— the Artil- 
lery : on whose throats might have been engraven, as on 
Cromwell's cannon— "open thou our mouths, O Lord ! 
and our lips shall speak forth thy praise !" 

What a divine thrill penetrated the loyal North, like 
electric fire, when Sumter fell! How the telegraph 
spark passed from soul to soul, like that firebrand which 
summoned, of old, the Scottish clans to mustering places 
and battle lines! How the minute-men of freedom 
sprang from Bay State fields, from Green Mountains 
and AVhite Mountains, from valleys of Connecticut and 
waters of Rhode Island, and headlands of Maine ! How 
New York replied from ocean to lakes ; and the rivers 
of Pennsylvania and plains of New Jersey, and woods of 
Delaware and Maryland, echoed the War-Cry of "Union" 
that rang through all the mighty West, from Ohio's 
banks to far-away shores of the Pacific ! 

Then it was that the doors of recruiting offices swarmed 
with eager thousands hastening to enroll their 
names upon the lists of glory. Then regiments were 
born in a day, and marched away, full-armored, in a week. 
Then the tramp of legions shook our City streets, and 
there was hurrying of companies and detachments, and 
squads, through every quiet village, to join the ranks of 
comrades ordered to the War. 

There was no holding back or faltering at that Spring- 
tide of loyal enthusiasm. Armed men sprang up on 
every side. No bounty-money then to stimulate the 
soldier ; no brokerage of manly service ; no buying of 
substitutes ; no flights to Canada ; no cowardly skulking 
from duty. These vile things were to grow afterward 
along with money-greed, and speculation in Government 
Loans and " Shoddy" contracts, and frauds upon the 
soldier, and swindling in high places. But in that fresh 
outburst of gallant zeal— that spontaneous gush of true 
manhood— there was but one passion— Patriotism ; there 
was but one purpose— to stand by the Republic ! 

How like the brave days of "16 seems that season of mil. 
Hia-muster on Boston Common ; when the yeoman came 



marching in, as their fathers had done, from Lexington, 
and Concord, and Pep peril], and Worcester, and the 
Heights of Charlestown, and Dorchester. 

How the old Revolutionary fire blazed up in the Park 
of New York city, when ten thousand sons of patriot 
sires sped thitherward, as in the time of Sears, and 
Schuyler, and Mac Dougal, to register their vows of loy- 
alty on the ancient, sacred neighborhood of Golden Hill, 
where freemeu had once battled against freedom's foes. 
How the men of Chester, and of Valley Forge, and of 
Germantown, came rushing to the Hall of Independence 
in Philadelphia: there to band themselves in a new 
" Pennsylvania Line," to hear a new tocsin from the 
antique belfry, proclaiming "Liberty throughout the 
and," and a new " Declaration " assuring its blessings to 
" all the inhabitants thereof." 

It was an hour— a spectacle— worth lifetimes of com- 
mon experience. Men were created in that hour out of 
the dust of mere traffickers and money-grubbers. Souls 
were rained upon, as with Pentecostal fire, and the muck 
of their every-day surroundings was burned off from 
them. Indeed, I doubt not that the true Republic, the 
new nation of our Future, was conceived in that hour of 
patriotic love and fervor, to be thereafter born from 
the embrace of Freedom and Union; born to an immor- 
tality beyond all nations and republics of the past. 

Was it strange that the seeds of heroes should be plant- 
ed at this glowing season of unselfishness: seeds to spring 
up under suns and showers of battle, into a harvest of 
grand achievement? We were dead, indeed, as a People, 
had there been no vital germ implanted in our lives, to 
blossom, in good time.unto fruitage of honor. But our Re- 
public, though smitten sorely with the leprosy of Slavery 
had never yet been poisoned at the fount of its ancestral 
love for Liberty. The blood of Warren and Wooster 
mingled with the crystal rivers of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, and those streams became the daily drink 
of their descendants. The spirit of Herkimer still 
brooded in Mohawk valleys; the heart of Mercer had not 
ceased to throb on the breeze that blew over Jersey ware 
fields; and the echoes of " Mad Anthony's" battle-cry had 
not died amid the glens of Pennsylvania. So the old 
pulse soon throbbed under fever of new impulses; th e 
worth of Revolutionary blood asserted itself; and with it 
arose a fresh tide of loyal devotion welling from other 
veins — veins not kindred with American lineage, but 
generously kindred with Democratic freedom— veins full 
of the nation's coming life, and rich in the promise of 
patriotism! Glorified with the same lustre as our own 
is the blood of our foreign-born citizens — that blood 
which mingles with ours in all the Southern soil ; which 
nourishes, like ours, the roots of our freedom-tree, which 
ripens, with ours, in a glorious harvest of blessings on a 
land that is the common heritage of mankind. 

I had never a fear for the Republic while beholding the 
scenes of April and May of 1861 ; while curbing my ex- 
uberant heart, that always leaped to the throat at 
sight of our brave boys buckling their arms on and 
kissing the mothers who bore them, and the sisters who 
loved them, perhaps for the last, last time ! I had 
never a fear for the country, though my eyelids grew 
often moist when the ranks marched by me so proudly 
and the people shouted for them, and the matrons and 
maids waved 'kerchiefs that were wet with the tens of 
their proud affection. And afterward — at the midnight 
of our cause— I had only to recall the memory of those 
sacred days, to feel that we were still assured of triumph 
and secure of freedom. God would not have given such 
promise had he not mercifully designed its realization. 

And throughout that terrible conflict— that fierce 
battle of Armageddon, which at last, under Eternal 
Wisdom, smote down the forces of American slavery— how 
singularly commensurate with our National necessities 
were the qualities of our National ruler. Abraham Lin- 
coln wielded thoaxes of our Republic's lictors, as he had 
long ago wielded the axes of his father, to clear the will 
derness of impediments, to let the light of heaven into 
long-shrouded labyrinths, and to build up new borders 
for the expanding area of Freedom. The homely jest, 
the arch smile were for a desponding people, to cheer and 



encourage; the laboring brain, the racked thought were 
for himself, unseen by men, to shape out of rugged 
danger the free future of his country. A renowned war- 
rior might have shattered the Republic; an ambitious 
statesman might have betrayed it; a profound philoso- 
pher might have bewildered it; a brilliant genius might 
have wrecked it; but a simple, honest man— a Christian 
ruler — saved it. 

Abraham Lincoln fell at the gate of freedom, which he 
had kept so well. He fell notes a ruler, but as a Father, 
his hands outstretched in pardon, his lips murmuring 
words of mercy, his heart overflowing with charity for 
even the wont of his enemies. And when he fell, there 
you, and I and Freedom's self fell down and uttered one 
great wail of lamentation. Not America alone, but the 
world, gave token of bereavement, its voice a requiem, its 
expression an elegy; the death-song of a leader, a ruler, 
a liberator; chanted as no death-song was ever before 
chanted— undertoned by a feeling deeper than was ever 
invoked by the demise of monarchs or the immolation of 
heroes. Great men perish in all ages. Their funeral 
processions move from century to century; their monu- 
ments arise in all the corridors of history. But if we con- 
sider the relations which Abraham Lincoln sustained to 
the most vital interests of humanity; if we reflect upon 
the tremendous results involved in that mighty drama of 
progress, whereof Abraham Lincoln was tie chief per- 
sonage, we must acknowledge that no recorded tragedy 
approaches our own in momentous significance, and that 
no other mortal victim presents so sublime and affecting 
a sacrifice. 

Rome had her Marcus Curtius, who rode, full armored, 
into a gulf that his country might be relieved from 
threatened peril; her high priest Decius, who offered his 
life as a mediation between contending armies: her im- 
perial Caesar, who sank under the daggers of conspiracy. 
Switzerland had her Winkelried, who gave his b >som to 
Austrian spears, that he might "make a path for Li' er- 
ty !" A host of martyrs have glorified freedom and re- 
ligion on the scaffold and at the stake. Hecatombs of 
kingly lives have been heaped upon the altars of war and 
retribution. But there was never a human sacrifice more 
pure than that which bereaved this Republic of our w ise, 
our faithful, our well-beloved Abraham Lincoln. 

The character of this Man asks no labored eulogium. 
His life was its own panegyric. 

As a statesman, clear-seeing, thoughtful, inflexibly 
honest; as a Ruler, just, discreet, merciful; as a man 
kind-hearted, genial, reliable; as a citizen plain, demo- 
cratic, unassuming ; as a Christian, humble, unostenta- 
tious, sincere; he walked the ways of private and public 
station in a single-minded, guileless devotedness tonis 
country's good ; climbing, step by step to greatness, and 
passing at last from Martyrdom to Immortality. 

Abraham Lincoln was a chosen man: chosen for Death, 
as well as for Life. £ It is probable that the peculiar com- 
bination of personal qualities which made up his simple, 
earnest, 'practical character, contributed more to the 
successful conduct of our National affairs than the most 
transcendent abilities of a consummate statesman or sol- 
dier could have dune. 

He possessed that within his nature which made him 
the conductor of a great People. 

He had] no [repellingantagonisnis ; no selfish traits to 
alarm egotism ; no duplicity, concealing ambition. Open, 
unsuspecting, fraternal, forgiving, he loved his coun- 
try, revered her constitution, but— above all, he wor- 
shipped that divine spirit which we call Liberty, 

To such a man— chosen from the People's ranks, and 
trained in the school of earlv trial, hewing his own way 
out of obscurity— to this representative man was en- 
trusted by Eternal Wisdom the. guidance of our nation 
through a War of Deliverance. His allotted task was 



achieved ; the harvest of his toil had been reaped : our 
Republic was garnering the golden ripeness of Victory, 
and the olives of Peace were springing at her feet, when 
in an instant under God's permission, the Chief was 
stricken down as with a thunderbolt, and the nation 
shaken as by an earthquake. 

They made his grave in the Great West. It will be a 
place of Pilgrimage, even as this solemn anniversaryof ths 
Martyr's death must become a sacred day, to be com- 
memorated hereafter, as your thoughtful German piety 
and the love which you bear to freedom, have taught you 
here to commemorate it. 

Over the grave of Abraham Lincoln, in the Western 
land, will gleam for Pilgrim eyes hereafter, a guiding star 
like that which led the Magians of old to Bethlehem. Let 
it be the Star of Empire, if you will. For me it is the 
Star of Liberty. Freedom broadens toward the Western 
skies, like a glorious sunsetting— a setting which pre- 
figures an arising hereafter, and breaks already upon 
shadows of the East beyond it. 

" Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." 
That Star of Empire is the Star of Liberty, guiding Co- 
lumbus to his New World, leading forth Pilgrim men to 
Plymouth Rock, ascendant over George Washington, the 
Champion of Independence, and fixed like a planet above 
the grave of Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipator of 
Races. 

Wondrously significant to him who reads aright is the 
bright procession of our Stars into the shadows which 
they are to disperse, the obscurities they must irradiate. 

Star after star emerging from calm blue ether ; orb 
after orb wheeling into musical march ; how sublime this 
astreal review between Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

To the eye of faith there is a meaning in the history of 
States, as traced upon the flag of our Republic— that 
starry chart of Destiny. Thirteen Stripes remain as they 
were fixed by Revolutionary hands, types and memorials 
of States that are foundation-stones of a great Nation's 
structure, immutable as symbols, equal in place and pro- 
portion. But the Stars— those emblems of glory and em- 
pire—have become manifold in number, and like the 
noonday sun in splendor. The thirteen are born into 
thirty-seven. Our trackless wildernesses are nebulaj of 
nations— star-germs, r'pening into galaxies. And as each 
resplendent centre radiates into sister spheres, and pours 
its brightness to the common core of light, all shadows of 
the Past and Future may well flee away; all darkness, in 
which human tribes and races are fearfully waiting, may 
well be seamed and rifted. 

Meantime, how grand the spectacle of Republics bound 
in one divisionless Republic ! Though the Rebellion, 
like Lucifer, trailed a third part of the Stars behind its 
crimson chariot, their fall, thank God! was not "like 
Lucifer's— never to rise again!" Already they arise; 
already glitter through the mist of gory dust that 
dimmed their lustre. Anon, tbey will beam again, with 
old, celestial brilliancy. Ere long their wondering and 
deflected rays will stream from the old central core of 
light and glory. It was a stormy midnight that obscured 
them— a night of murkiness and unclean vapors. But the 
blue ether is around them now once more. The heavens 
of Freedom reclaim them! 

Advance, then. O march of stars— majestic in the front 
of our republic ! I accept the New World as an arena of 
manhood— as a field of progressive conquest. I look for 
its generations to enlarge into the symmetry and propor- 
tions of a New People and a New Republic. The Star of 
Columbus and Discovery is of the Past. The Star of 
Lincoln and Liberty illumes the Present. The Star 
of Redemption will yet arise, its zenith irradiating a 
Brotherhood of Humanity— its horizon embracing a De- 
mocracy of the World ! 



